Darkness on the Edge of Town – Bruce Springsteen

This is so last week, but I finally got around to reading the recent piece by Matthew Crawford from the New York Times Magazine “The Case for Working With Your Hands” which apparently generated a pretty substantial buzz.

To be honest, I’m more than a little appalled at that fact. While there are certainly plenty of interesting things to be said about the relationships between knowledge production, labor, and the alienation of work, I don’t think Crawford said any of them. Instead, he offered a piece of – to my eyes – pure kitsch.

Despite one sentence at the beginning of the piece cautioning against portrayals of manual laborers which “idealize them as the salt of the earth and emphasize the sacrifice for others their work may entail” Crawford then proceeds to do precisely that. What’s more, he does it all from a perverse perspective that attempts to be both intensely subjective (‘here’s my awesome story of how I got to be so awesome’) and subtly totalizing (‘my story doesn’t just have meaning for me, it turns out to actually say something Significant about life in the Modern World’).

After reading it, I was left asking a simple question. What exactly did Crawford tell us that has not already been said a thousand times before? Take, for example, Office Space – which communicated all the useful insights of this piece, AND managed to do it with sufficient humor to prevent it from immediately defaulting to a mawkish sentimentality. Crawford’s story, in contrast, treats work done on ‘real’ objects in the ‘real’ world as unfailingly redemptive, soul-enriching, ennobling.

It’s a world where even the bad things turn out to be ennobling:

Often as not, however, such crises do not end in redemption. Moments of elation are counterbalanced with failures, and these, too, are vivid, taking place right before your eyes. With stakes that are often high and immediate, the manual trades elicit heedful absorption in work. They are punctuated by moments of pleasure that take place against a darker backdrop: a keen awareness of catastrophe as an always-present possibility. The core experience is one of individual responsibility, supported by face-to-face interactions between tradesman and customer.

By virtue of its ‘realness’ this sort of work wipes away all the confusion created by the knowledge economy and lets us authentically be our ‘selves.’ What’s more, it’s the way that everyone can partake in this sort of thing that allows us to build a community. There’s no dissembling here. People speak in plain words and with honesty. In short, this sort of work wipes away the unacceptability of life – it returns us to the ‘real’ America.

But of course, that authentic world is just as much myth as is the world of economies built on knowledge rearrangements and the monotony of cubicles. The question is not which is more true. Rather, the question is what is at stake in telling this kind of story.

I’m reminded of Milan Kundera’s The Unbearable Lightness of Being.

How did the senator know that children meant happiness? Could he see into their souls? What if, the moment they were out of sight, three of them jumped the fourth and began beating him up?
The senator had only one argument in his favor: his feeling. When the heart speaks, the mind finds it indecent to object. In the realm of kitsch, the dictatorship of the heart reigns supreme.
The feeling induced by kitsch must be a kind the multitude can share. Kitsch may not, therefore, depend on an unusual situation; it must derive from the basic images people have engraved in their memories: the ungrateful daughter, the neglected father, children running on grass, the motherland betrayed, first love.
Kitsch causes two tears to flow in quick succession. The first tear says: How nice to see children running on the grass!
The second tear says: How nice to be moved, together with all mankind, by children running on the grass!
It is the second tear that makes kitsch kitsch.
The brotherhood of man on earth will be possible only on a base of kitsch.

Crawford is writing about the second tear. His story is not merely a personal narrative. It is written with the injunction of all those who read: see how this makes my life more authentic! recognize the drudgery of your own life, of the society which we have built!

In short, it’s what you’d get if you took only the optimism from Springsteen and didn’t pair it with the faded loves and broken dreams. A world of ‘happily ever after,’ where there’s no darkness on the edge of town. It’s the caricature without any of the heft. It’s a story which purports to offer meaningfulness to life, but instead untethers it from all weight and burdens.

And that is what makes it kitsch. Not the idea that office work is alienating, but the sleight-of-hand used to tell one particular story and translate it into universality. It is in that translation that life loses all of its weight. To read this piece, and take it seriously, is to become lost in a morass of nihilism. Against a drudgery that exists out in the open – in cubicles and endless meetings about nothing and co-worker like Dwight Schrute – is counterposed a mythical escape. One where all of the pain and denial of life is negated.

It’s that negation that I have a problem with. It has nothing to do with the value of particular kinds of work or the way that we decide what constitutes meaning. It has everything to do with this sort of modern mythology, which is little more than an excuse for cultivating a dream of authenticity that cannot help but be dashed upon the rocks. As a piece of social commentary or political idea-making, Crawford’s point might well be useful. But as a matter of aesthetics, telling the story the way he does makes it nothing more than muzak – an evisceration of everything powerful to be found in such a project.

I’ve come across several interesting sonic experiments on the interwebs in the past couple days. As I noted a few months ago, I’ve been listening to a lot of ambient, minimalist stuff lately (while studying) which has helped to cultivate a growing interest in the geometry of sound in music. Which basically means: resonance and very tiny tonal interactions intrigue me in ways that they never did before.

As such, this project has drawn quite a bit of my attention in the past couple days. It’s a compilation of youtube videos, with a wide variety of sounds, instruments, voices, etc. The crucial thing is that they’re all in the key of B flat. You can pick and choose which ones to play. The result is (invariably) eery, delightful, are intensely beautiful. For me at least, it really helps to clarify the emergent nature of music – the way that sounds play against each other to pass that invisible, astonishing barrier between noise and music.

Play around with it. It’s like having your own personal Stars of the Lid-generator in your browser.

Second, there’s this little thing: basically a mini-synthesizer set to instantly reproduce whatever notes you tell it to play. For something that only gives you 16 steps to work with and 16 tonal variations, it is absolutely astonishing the variety of sounds you can produce. I think I wasted about three hours the other day just playing around with this.

Actually watching the sound produce itself as it works across the grid reminds me of those 90s-era movies that tried to visually represent ‘the internet’ or ‘virtual reality.’ But in a totally good way.

You can even copy and paste your favorite versions. I just made this one, which I’m finding moderately entertaining:

72196,33376,33032,45328,65544,78900,17608,16928,
23088,32792,68816,65792,16964,22816,33856,33032

And while I’m on the subject of this sort of music, allow me just a moment to rave about this new track from Hildur Gudnadottir.

Iridescence

It’s over 11 minutes, but feel like it goes by in a flash. The overlay of that droning sound on top of these thick cello movements is breathtaking. It evokes the deep winter of Iceland, a single streetlight casting long shadows in the snow…

She’s got an album called Without Sinking that came out a couple months ago which I haven’t picked up yet, but am really looking forward to.

Calm Down Dad – Helen Love

Some times you just want a little bit of snark. And who can provide that better than British twenty-somethings raised on punk and bubblegum. This track lives in a strange place somewhere in between The Dead Milkmen, the Ramones, and Tullycraft.

And while it’s a bit of ironic fluff, you can’t help but think that for all its silliness, it captures things far more deeply than a ‘serious’ take might. And I just can’t get enough of the little bit of “White Riot” they drop at the end.

Apparently Helen Love have been around forever. After hearing this track I did some digging and found a fairly wide range of music – all circling around this punk/bubblegum core, but dipping into more straightforward rock, twee pop, disco, dance, etc. Considering how much I love this sort of stuff, I’m surprised I had never come across them before. Fortunately, there’s a ton of stuff on eMusic, so I can explore to my heart’s content.

(h/t to A Certain Romance)

Maria – Blondie
Aaron & Maria – American Analog Set
Ave Maria – Johann Sebastian Bach

So it’s Sotomayor. I’m pretty happy about this. I won’t claim to know anything about her, but the folks that I trust on this sort of thing seem to think she’s about as good as we might expect – likely to be a modest push left from Souter. We’re not getting back to the Warren court any time soon, but there’s no reason to expect Sotomayor to be anything but a solid liberal judge.

I’ve written a couple things about the Court recently, which I don’t want to belabor too much. But I will say that I remain irritated with folks who are shocked (shocked!) that Republicans are proposing to try to block her appointment. They’re the opposition. They don’t like her positions, so they’re going to try to block her. That’s what happens. It won’t work, and that’ll be the end of it.

And, going back to my discussion of “identity politics” – I just thought it was worth calling out a few folks who had reactions today which left a lot to be desired.

First, there’s Randall Kennedy, who says “The focus on biography–who one’s parents were, difficulties surmounted, social distance traveled–has become a terrible distraction.” Which would be relevant if we were discussing an abstract legal philosophy to the bench. But since we’re talking about installing a person (into a lifetime position, I might add), it seems like “biography” might matter just a little bit. There are real people in those robes, and how they come to decisions is part of the qualifications for the office. Appointing someone because it’s a good ‘story’ would be a bad practice, but appointing someone because their life experiences give them the capacity to render better decisions very much does matter.

And then there’s Alan Dershowitz, who (unsurprisingly) seems to have no capacity for recognizing gray areas:

We used to have a “Jewish seat,” a “Catholic seat,” a “Black seat,” and a “woman’s seat.” But what about Asians? Moreover, there are different kinds of Asians. Chinese Americans have little in common with Japanese Americans, though they do share a long history of enmity and distrust. It would be as if there were “a Semitic seat,” and the President had to decide who best to fill it with: a Hebrew semite or an Arab semite?
So enough with diversity and representatives on the Supreme Court. No one should be excluded because of race, gender, ethnicity, or other invidious factors, as too many groups were for too many years. But nor should anyone be selected based on such factors, lest the person see him or herself as “representing” that constituency on the court (as congressmen properly do).
The only bases for selection should be legally relevant criteria of excellence. If those criteria are fairly applied, there will always be a diverse court, especially since the legal profession today has far fewer barriers to success.

Professor Dershowitz really has done a good job of devastating that arguments of all those folks who want to establish a quota system for Supreme Court appointments. Meanwhile, back here in the real world, we recognize A) that there are congresswomen these days, too B) that there’s a lot of space between having a “Jewish seat” and believing that diversity is a meaningful question in deciding among many eminently qualified candidates and C) that a completely abstract notion of “legally relevant criteria” doesn’t offer a whole lot of hope for “fair application.”

Bear in mind that these two people are writing in FAVOR of Sotomayor. It just goes to show how much there is invested in the idea that whiteness and maleness are ‘normal’ and do not constitute ‘identity categories’ which might inspire favorable treatment.

I’m not going to get into the embarrassment of the opponents like Huckabee calling her “Maria” (c’mon Mike) or not-at-all subtly implying that her status as a Latina will make her constitutionally incapable of rendering “fair” judgments. If those folks want to acknowledge that John Roberts is equally incapacitated by his racial and gender identity, then we can talk.

I do have some more complex things I’ve been thinking regarding the idea of ‘feelings’ being part of the judge’s decision-making process, but it gets into some academic work I’ve been doing and may be a little too esoteric to actually write about here. If I find myself in the mood, I may post that in the next couple days.

Dog Days are Over – Florence and the Machine

Florence and the Machine (aka Florence Welch) raced around the blogs last year with her track “Kiss With a Fist” a full-throated Northern Soul throwback that hit you with as much force as the disturbing title suggests. It combined the beauty and elegance of a soul track with the grungy stomp of garage rock. The result was an enthusiastic romp through the travails of domestic violence.

Anyways, as much as I loved that track, I never really followed up on it. Turns out that was a mistake. I noticed a few days ago that she had an EP out and picked it up on eMusic. And was blown away. The opening track “Dog Days Are Over” is, if anything, even more emphatic than “Kiss With a Fist” was. Except here, you’re treated to two minutes of a more leisurely pace before the sparks really start to fly. But in that last minute you really get a chance to hear her voice shine.

The third track is “You’ve Got the Love” – perhaps the most straightforward song here, but which still manages to convey a voice that’s either on the brink of collapse or has been so far backed into a corner that it’s about to lash out with a force you can hardly imagine.

The fourth track is a cover of the Cold War Kids’ “Hospital Beds” which doesn’t do a whole lot for me, but at least is a substantial improvement on the original – which did even less. Finally, there’s an atmospheric remix of “Dog Days Are Over” which doesn’t match up to the original tracks, but offers an intriguing second perspective. It definitely suggests that in a very short career she’s already managed to produce some works that can tap into a wide range of genres without losing her rough-and-tumble attitude.

My excitement is piqued even more upon discovering that this is all just a preface to the full album, called Lungs, due out in July. The first three tracks (i.e. – the essential songs) will all be included, and I’m excited to hear the rest.

Michael Scherer gives voice to something I’ve been wondering about for the past few weeks:

Cheney rejected at face value the “recruitment-tool theory,” which posits that information about harsh interrogation methods riles America’s enemies and increases the danger abroad. (Final truthfulness note: Cheney and the Bush Administration have long echoed military leaders in arguing that the release of photos, like the abuses at Abu Ghraib, could harm U.S. military interests by rousing anti-American sentiment abroad.)

How exactly can these arguments be squared? Are we really supposed to believe that potential insurgents exist out there in the world who don’t care in the slightest about our torture practices, the fact we invaded Iraq without cause, the general insistence on the spread of secular humanism (on our terms…or else!), etc. but who will instantly transform into terrorists bent on the destruction of all that is good and true as soon as…more pictures are released?

I know sometimes it seems like I’m uncritical in my support for Obama. In part, it’s because I really do think he’s got a good handle not just on what the ‘right’ thing to do is, but also on the more subtle questions of what is currently possible and how we might go about constructing a world where better options become available.

That said, I’ve been pretty disappointed with him on some of this terrorism stuff lately. In part because the turnaround on releasing these pictures is just depressing and stupid. To whatever extent they provoke a backlash – they OUGHT to do so. We did terrible things. And if seeing pictures of it makes people angry, they have every right to be mad. The reason you release the pictures is to own up to what we did and try to prevent it from happening again.

Beyond that, though, I’ve also just been annoyed with the general attitude that he has been promoting on security. Namely: “OMG, terrorism is soooo scary!!! I don’t agree with some of the stuff that Bush did but I sure can see why they thought it was necessary! Because terrorism is teh WORST thing that could ever happen!”

I realize that there’s a political dynamic to this. People are obsessed with security issues – despite the fact that there are literally hundreds of other ways in which they’re more likely to suffer which the government can play a role in addressing (sickness, injury, poverty, pollution, drunk driving, poor health, etc.). But the ‘magic’ of Obama on a lot of issues is his capacity to deal with the political realities of this particular moment and pivot with an eye toward reshaping attitudes for the future.

He’s simply not doing that on terrorism. Saying that we need to be reasonable on this issue is fine. But at some point it would be nice to point out that more people die every month from a disastrous health care system than have been killed in all terrorist attacks in the history of the country. There’s even an easy way to frame this stuff: “human security.”

If you’re going to say something like “In the midst of all these challenges, however, my single most important responsibility as President is to keep the American people safe” then at least bring up the fact that safety doesn’t just come at the barrel of a gun. Safety is not only found in the prevention of catastrophic violence. It’s also found in freedom from cancer. It’s found in a world that doesn’t face collapsing biodiversity, resource shortages, and ever-worse storms. It’s found in knowing that your child will grow up with straight teeth, a healthy body, and an active mind. It’s found in schools with good teachers, modern equipment, and quality books. It’s found in a a minimum wage that doesn’t condemn you to living in poverty. It’s found in having access to reasonable credit and not suffering the extortions of the credit industry. It’s found in not being made to feel inadequate or insufficient due to your race, gender, sexual orientation, or anything else.

I know he doesn’t want to come off as a squishy liberal, but the guy is really popular. If ever there’s going to be a time to change this dynamic where security is understood in only the most narrow and apocalyptic of terms, that time is now.

Madame Shocking – The Silent Years

My first instinct on listening to Let Go the new EP from The Silent Years is to reach out for the easy RIYLs: Arcade Fire (or Cloud Cult), Vampire Weekend, the Polyphonic Spree. And that’s fair. If you like those bands, there’s plenty here to whet your appetite.

But I don’t want to give the wrong impression. To really grasp what’s going on with The Silent Years, you’d need to combine elements of those three but also toss in a few obscure bands who play to shows of 6 or 7 people and consider themselves to be the painters of sonic landscapes. Because the little guitar wiggles may evoke Vampire Weekend, but really owe a lot more to the experimentalism of past eras – which pulls in ‘world’ sounds but gives them a new dynamic. And that rat-a-tat drums scream Big and Epic but this has nothing to do with aping Funeral and instead is a call to arms for music that doesn’t shy away from itself. Hence the Polyphonic Spree reference.

Or think Brian Wilson several albums after Smile in a parallel universe where he kept the crazy enough in check to keep writing songs.

And really, that’s the amazing thing here. For a record that clearly trends deeply into experimentation and sonic weirdness, it remains completely devoid of artifice. While the sound and style is often opaque, it’s not out of a desire to hide the truth. Instead, it’s all about revealing the truth in all its impossible complexity and ridiculousness. The music bends, bows, crashes, explodes. It’s a casual dab of paint on a white background. It’s the rattling and shaking of a train about to exit a tunnel. It’s the geometry of motion.

Actually, the song titles themselves are as evocative as anything I could write. “Taking Drugs At The Amusement Park” or “Vampires Bite The Hands Feed Them” give you precisely what you’d expect. Or rather, they surprise you exactly as much as you you’d hope they would. In particular the interplay between the horns and drums on the latter track simply defies words. Meanwhile, “Forest Fire” gives you the moment when the little sparks that dance around to light up a cold night reach a critical mass and start to tear across the horizon leaving smoke and ashes in their wake.

And after a minute of toying with you, the final two-thirds of “Madame Shocking” is as nice a pop song as you’re likely to hear this year. It’s driven by a clever little elliptical guitar line and carries you along the top of a wave for miles and miles.

The last two tracks take the foot off the pedal a bit, but on the strength of the opening four tracks, it’s hard to do anything but gush about this record.

Let Go is due out in July but is available through iTunes right now.

Dear Corinne – Ferraby Lionheart

Ferraby Lionheart has never quite done it for me. I just have a hard time getting into that easy-going style that he’s got going on. And his voice just feels a little too Jens Lekman for me. I liked Catch the Brass Ring fine enough but I had a hard time believing that he’d ever make a song that blew me away.

I was wrong. “Dear Corinne” is a revelation. It takes everything I thought I knew and reassembles it into a masterpiece of desperate love and acoustic magic. This is a box cracked and faded love letters, lost to time. Names, dates, places…all washed away and covered in smudges. But through it all something shines through.

Things start out modestly enough, and for the first minute you could be forgiven for thinking that this was simply more of the same – pretty enough but nothing more. And then the percussion hiccups for the second verse and you start to sense that something is building. When the horn solo happens at 2:07 you begin to wonder if you’re being permitted to listen in on something intensely private and pure.

And then you’re primed. You know something beautiful is about to happen but the anticipation is washed over by a sense of gentleness and care. And when his voice does that thing that it does on “picks me up and delivers me home” you know it simply couldn’t be any other way.

Supposedly, this is the first track off a new album due out this summer. I wasn’t excited about it before this song, but now I can’t wait.

Stickshifts and Safetybelts – Cake

Michelle Cottle makes this bizarre comment about seat belt laws:

Yes. I’m well aware of the stats showing that mandatory seat belt laws save lives. I myself feel more secure wearing a seat belt–and did even before I bought a car with one of those migraine-inducing systems that beeps at me every single time I briefly unbuckle my belt at a stoplight to reach back and pick up whatever toy/book/juicebox my child has dropped on the floor. But if I chose not to wear a seat belt, it shouldn’t be anyone’s business but my own.

Seat belt laws are a classic example of government overreach. Unlike most other road rules I can think of, failure to buckle up does not impact the safety of anyone other than the adult making the decision. My wearing a seat belt does not make me a better driver, nor does it decrease the odds of injury to others involved in a crash with me.

I know it’s not a particularly important issue in the grand scheme of things. But seat belt laws really do save lives. These aren’t pretend lives. They’re real, tangible ones. Children who aren’t orphaned. Parents who don’t lose their teenage kids. Friends who get to keep hanging out.

I don’t think it’s the job of the government to regulate every element of life. But I also think it’s a desperately unpleasant perspective on the role of the state to think that it has no role to play in fostering behavior. That it’s purely a regulatory beast that exists to take taxes and provide services.

Clearly, there isn’t an a prior case for state intervention in all walks of life. But…given that seat belt laws impose zero meaningful harm on society and they provide a very tangible benefit, I don’t see how this is a particularly controversial case.

But in a broader sense, phrases like “shouldn’t be anyone’s business but my own” and “government overreach” suggest to me that going down the privacy route of rights protection may carry with it a lot of unfortunate attitudes. The right to privacy obviously exists (even Sarah Palin agrees!) and it’s important. But the problem with privacy is that it’s purely about toleration. A right to abortion founded in privacy accepts the premise that abortion is bad but says that the state simply isn’t allowed to regulate it – as much as it might rightly wish to. Lawrence v. Texas was obviously great, but is troubling to the extent that it implies that same sex acts may well be despicable – but are simply beyond the reach of the state to prohibit.

The effect of the law doesn’t change much, but the attitude toward it, it’s durability in practice, and its interpretive effect does change. There is a world of difference between a right to abortion based in privacy and one based in equal protection. In the first case, your right is to non-interference by the state in this decision. In the second, your right is to control over your own reproductive status and identity. In the case of Lawrence, there’s a difference between saying that states aren’t allowed to regulate the practice and saying that there is a basic right to sexual expression. The point being that we ought to care about living in a society where people are affirmatively valued as equal citizens regardless of their sexual orientation or gender, rather than one where difference is tolerated (grudgingly).

So I’m definitely not against privacy. It’s an important foundational right. But I am troubled by the extent to which it’s treated as the sufficient way of regarding the reach of the state. Where seat belt laws are implicitly equated with abortion (at least to the extent that the role imagined for the state is one principally one of non-interference). As if the only relevant question is whether it’s your personal decision – rather than the real issue, which is the sort of society we want to live in.

It’s legitimate to regulate seat belt habits because it saves lives, it reduces health care costs, and reduces insurance costs (all public goods), and because there is clearly no meaningful right to drive a car while not wearing a seatbelt.

Accidentally Like a Martyr – Warren Zevon

I know it’s not exactly uncharted territory to bash on Michael Steele, but I just can’t resist. He apparently just said the following, as an ‘argument’ against gay marriage:

Now all of a sudden I’ve got someone who wasn’t a spouse before, that I had no responsibility for, who is now getting claimed as a spouse that I now have financial responsibility for. So how do I pay for that? Who pays for that? You just cost me money.

So now the GOP is anti-marriage? Does Michael Steele really not understand that this supposedly devastating health care effect happens daily to tens of thousands of businesses suffering under the weight of breeder marriages?

Given that his party is ALL ABOUT defending marriage, he clearly can’t mean that. I think this is one of those instances where someone blusters so much that they forget themselves and actually stumble into saying what they really mean. Because this statement – stripped of the preposterous small business angle – amounts to the following: “gay people aren’t people and thus don’t deserve things we treat as customary for straight people.”

Seriously, his argument is that marriage is so bad for the economy that we should only consider allowing it for straight people. Which I’m sure would have worked a decade ago, but even in 2004 when we suffered a major setback on gay marriage, the right had already figured out that defending discrimination wasn’t going to fly. So they couched it in terms of ‘traditional marriage’ and ‘defending the rights of kids to have two parents’ and other assorted nonsense that translated the real issue into code in an effort to nullify the bigotry charges.

Michael Steele, though, sees himself as the Bill Cosby of the 21st century GOP and thus hasn’t noticed any cultural events of the past two decades. So he just says stuff like this and once again shows himself to be the complete buffoon that we’ve come to know and love these past few months.

UPDATE: Reading the actual AP story, it gets even funnier. Steele came up with this argument as “an example of how the party can retool its message to appeal to young voters and minorities.” Because the one thing that young voters and minorities LOVE to hear about is how people who own small businesses matter infinitely more than excluded minorities.

I wonder what it’s like in Michael Steele’s world. Does the rain fall up? Do people bathe in dirt? Is Mr. Rogers a deranged pyschopath?